Chapter 6: Human Resource Management Flashcards
Human Resource Management (def)
refers to the policies, practices, and systems that influence employees’ behavior, attitudes, and performance.
Why is HRM important?
Organizations are not buildings or machinery or financial assets; rather, they are the PEOPLE in them.
Old vs. new practices of HR
The old approach to HRM was only concerned with administrative services and transactions (compensation, hiring, and staffing). Emphasis was on resource efficiency and service quality.
The new approach to HRM (in addition to the above), has grown to encompass business-partner services and strategic partners.
- Business-Partner Services include developing effective HR systems and helping implement business plans, and talent management. Emphasis is on knowing the business and exercising influence (problem solving, designing effective systems to ensure needed competencies).
- Strategic Partner management includes contributing to business strategy based on considerations of human capital, business capabilities, readiness, and developing HR practices as strategic differentiators. Emphasis is on knowledge of HR and of the business, competition, the market, and business strategies.
2 HR practices (OVERVIERW)
- Financial Reward practices
2. Job design practices
The meaning of money:
- financial rewards (def)
- Money (def)
FINANCIAL REWARDS = a form of exchange (labor/skill/knowledge for money). Rewarding people with money is one of the oldest applied performance practices.
MONEY = a tool (an instrument of acquiring other things of values) or a drug (an object of addictive value in itself) – it relates to our NEEDS and our SELF-CONCEPT.
- Money means different things to different people (it is not just a matter of greed). It is a symbol of power/status, a means of autonomy/independence (from difficult situations, for example), a means of taking care of others (e.g., your family) or even a symbol of generosity.
4 types of Financial rewards - OVERVIEW
- what are you rewarding
- Membership and seniority based
- Job status based
- Competency based
- Performance based
- Membership and seniority based (types of financial rewards)
- def
- sample rewards
- advantages and disadvantages
= fixed pay, most employee benefits (“golden handcuff”), i.e., rewards that discourage employees from quitting because of deferred bonuses or generous benefits that are not available elsewhere
SAMPLE REWARDS
Fixed pay, most employee benefits, paid time off
ADVANTAGES
May attract applicants, minimizes stress of insecurity (stable pay), reduces turnover
DISADVANTAGES
Doesn’t directly motivate performance, may discourage poor performers from leaving, undermine performance (continuance rather than affective commitment)
- Job status based (types of financial rewards)
- def
- sample rewards
- advantages and disadvantages
= promotion-based pay increase, status-based pay increase. This is done through job-evaluation (systematically rating the worth of jobs within an organization by measuring the required skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions).
SAMPLE REWARDS
Promotion-based pay increase, status-based benefits
ADVANTAGES
Tries to maintain internal equity, minimizes pay discrimination, motivates employees to compete for promotions
DISADVANTAGES
Encourages hierarchy, which may increase costs and reduce responsiveness, reinforces status differences, motivates job competition and exaggerated job worth
- Competency based
(types of financial rewards)
- def
- advantages and disadvantages
= pay increase based on competency, skill-based pay
ADVANTAGES
Improves workforce flexibility, tends to improve quality, is consistent with employability
DISADVANTAGES
Relies on subjective measurement of competencies, skill-based pay plans are expensive
- Performance based (types of financial rewards)
- 5 sample rewards
- advantages and disadvantages
EXAMPLES
a. INDIVIDUAL based rewards (commissions or merit pay)
b. GAINSHARING plan = a team-based reward that calculates bonuses from the work unit’s cost saving and productivity improvement
c. Employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) = a rewards system that encourages employees to buy company stock
d. STOCK options = a reward system that gives the right to purchase company stock at a future date and at a predetermined price.
e. Profit-sharing plans
ADVANTAGES
Motivates task performance, attracts performance-oriented applicants, organizational rewards create an ownership culture, pay variability may avoid layoffs during downturns
DISADVANTAGES
May weaken job content motivation, may distance reward giver from receiver, may discourage creativity, tends to address symptoms not the underlying causes of behavior
Improving Reward Effectiveness
Reward systems motivate most employees, but only under the right conditions. To improve:
- Link rewards to performance (expectancy theory, chapter 5)
- Ensure rewards are relevant (what employees want/need)
- Give team rewards for interdependent jobs (to encourage cooperation)
- Ensure rewards are valued (= the solution is to ask employees what they value)
- Beware of unintended consequences
Job design (definition)
- goal of job design
A JOB is a set of tasks to be performed by one person.
JOB DESIGN is the process of assigning tasks to a job, including the interdependency of those tasks with other jobs.
- An organization’s goal is to design jobs that can be performed efficiently leaving employees motivated and engaged.
Job specialisation and scientific management
- definitions
- advantages and disadvantages
JOB SPECIALIZATION = the result of a division of labor, in which work is subdivided into separate jobs assigned to different people (comes from Taylorism)
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT = a fundamental theory of management introduced by Frederik Winslow Taylor in the early 1900s. He championed specialization and standardization, as well as popularizing training, goal setting and incentives.
ADVANTAGES Improves work efficiency by - Less time changing between activities - Jobs mastered more quickly - Better person-job matching
DISADVANTAGES
- Low motivation (highly repetitive and tedious discourages employees)
- Absenteeism and turnover
- Higher wages to offset tedium
- Work quality affected
Job characteristics model (Job design practices)
- definition
Job characteristics model is a job design model that relates the motivational properties of jobs to specific personal and organizational consequences of those properties.
It is based on the Motivator-Hygiene theory = by Herzberg, states that employees are primarily motivated by growth and esteem needs, not by lower-level needs (or hygiene’s e.g., working conditions, job security). The lower-level needs, on the other hand, prevent dissatisfaction.
5 Core job characteristics
“the degree to which…”
- Skill variety = the extent to which employees must use different skills and talents to perform tasks within their jobs
- Task identity = the degree to which a job requires competition of a whole or an identifiable piece of work
- Task significance = the degree to which a job has a substantial impact on organization and/or larger society
- Autonomy = the degree to which a job gives employees the freedom, independence, and discretion to schedule their work and determine the procedures used in completing it
- Job feedback = the degree to which employees can tell how well they are doing from direct information from the job itself
!!!! INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES are extremely important – job design does not increase work performance for everyone in every situation!
